Deserving of Pennies
by merryfortune
Summary: [Darkfic] Jin cherishes the light and all the certainties and truth He brings.


**Deserving of Pennies**

The dark was soft and safe. But the light, Jin found the light to be far more alluring. It took his breath away and opened his eyes. It awakened him to a higher purpose. A gentle voice – so calm and calculated – and it spoke to him and only him. He thought himself to be dreaming but it was too radiant; too certain and Jin knew life to be a dream. And that was not a dream.

Jin had spent so much of his life in the aftermath of shock and horror that everything seemed so vague and unclear, uncertain of anything except fluorescent lights atop of him and pristine sheets beneath him. And even then, it all seemed to irrelevant and hard to make out. Yet this… This was nothing like the wishy-washy lights that kept him awake during the day nor was it anything like the dark that kept him safe.

This was something real. It pierced his life, where he had sunken into the despairing depths of this midnight, unchanging horror and brought him unto the holiest, midday light that Jin had ever experienced. This was something truthful and thus, Jin surrendered himself to it because it called his name. Not like how his brother would lovingly call his name; treating him so fragile and glass-like. This was far harder; far more like the brandishing of steel and without the cottonwool and velvet that he had forced himself to get used to in this dreary, painful existence so blurry and on the verge of not quite being there at all.

Perhaps it was unfortunate that this surrender had to have come right when his brother was right there. Jin was fond of his brother, after all. Though, that fondness drifted from day to day; not that Jin could tell the difference between seconds and hours or more widely, the days of the week. Regardless, Shoichi was the only staying presence that Jin cared about. The nurses and doctors all blended into one another; all the same uniforms but never the same face whilst always being… faceless. And yet, Jin, forever at the mercy of these easy come and easy go waves of living still couldn't be certain if it was unfortunate that it had to happen in front of his brother. After all, this voice which called out to him. It was a good thing. Jin swears to Shoichi that it's a good thing and yet, his own voice wasn't even air in his lungs.

And so Shoichi holds onto him so dearly. His talk of wanting Jin to live him since he was 'getting better' was completely erased by these hot, crisp tears of panic as Jin turns to what was, ultimately, a cadaver in his hands. His head lolls back and his eyes shut, deserving of pennies, and Jin's consciousness is elsewhere. Slipped into blessed nothingness; lit by a lightning strike.

The acceptance that Jin handed himself over was one of total awe. For the briefest second, not even that, Jin felt elation in the first time in years. Sweet and genuine elation as he is stolen from his body and whisked through things he didn't understand. Didn't have to understand because it was all the ultimate goal of nothingness.

Jin was brought to a new plane of existence. His head was emptied. His body irrelevant. A perfect existence and it came with the companionship of _Him_. Humanity's successor. His Ignis, the one they would come to later call Lightning. He, the owner of that voice; pith and perfect. Jin adored it. Jin adored how certain He was and how he gave Jin's life meaning. And how he was the proof of Jin's life having meaning.

At the tender and naïve age of six, Jin was brought to his knees by how cruel and callous humanity could be. He had received the full brunt of such a truth that it had destroyed him. Of course, he would resent humanity. Of course, his Ignis would resent humanity when it had destroyed him so thoroughly that once it was over, Jin had been decimated by the battle.

But, in the ashes of such cruelty, there could be revenge. Not on those who had specifically hurt him. No, that was too small scale of thinking but on revenge on all of those who had hurt him. All of humankind. So irrational and heinous.

In the husk of his mind, Jin was thrilled by the opportunity his saviour had given him. To serve as his doll, his puppet, his glorified podium – it was an honour. It was something Jin genuinely cherished with an ardent breath of appreciation. If Jin hadn't been the one to birth this creature, he would have rejected this dignified role because it was too grand an honour for someone as pitiful as he. He who was of flesh and blood rather than sparkling, prismatic data. After all, despite his yearnings and trophied status Lightning held over him, he was still a human; a bag of disposable, decaying meat. As his heart burned, was ignited by, a rage for humanity so deep that it rendered him speechless; a rage so deep that it rendered him often immobile and turned him sick to his very stomach.

Jin was a vessel. He was made a vessel not just by the machinations of those involved in the Lost Incident and not fully by the machinations of his beloved Lightning and their – His – faction but by his own will, as well. He wanted to be a vessel. Before his eyes had been open to his true and ugly capacity, he had been a vessel for hope. He had wanted all the hopes and dreams that little children had but now, as an embittered adolescent, he wanted to be a vessel to all the tortures that humanity had the gall to inflict upon themselves and upon each other.

As Lightning's servant, Jin could finally sate his own needs to be a vessel. To carry out that hatred that had ebbed and flowed within him for the past decade; waxing and waning with his health and the frequencies of his brother's visits who so vainly tried to convince him otherwise of the world's harsh whims. But Jin knew the truth. Despite how endeared Shoichi was to Jin, Jin had always known the truth of their dark and velveteen, brotherly relations…

Jin knew that his brother held an ulterior motive in his heart, as good-natured as it was; as it seemed. Jin knew that his brother felt a violent guilt inside of his heart and the only reason that he hadn't let Jin rot in that hospital was because he needed his own medicine from it as well. He needed to get the dopamine hit of pretending to be a good elder brother in order to console his own conscious since he so preciously believed that he had failed Jin due to being unable to have prevented this whole mess in the first place.

Shoichi was of the self-centred belief that if he had somehow been a better brother, then maybe Jin could have been found sooner. That maybe he would never have been kidnapped, stolen, in the first place but Jin would digress. If Shoichi wanted to be a better human, even to him from this place of what may have been genuine kindness even if it was all wrapped up in his egocentric pursuit of easing his guilt, then Jin reasons that Shoichi should never have been born at all. His mistake was being human at all.

Yet, Jin was strangely ambivalent. It was difficult for him not to be due to the decade he had lived; so near catatonic and formless. In some ways, he had an attachment to Shoichi and some days, it came from a place of niceties, even genuine familial love, and other times, it was burden. Proof to him that he could never fully sever himself from humanity and be included as part of Lightning's most righteous plan as something more than glorified podium for his excellent speech and duels.

After all, as Jin performed his duties, he was happy. He was content and though he could not yearn for Lightning had clipped and groomed him, he still had aspirations because it was the hallmark of sapience, of sentience, of free will, to have ambition. To kiss and lick the heel of Lightning – of humanity's true successor – was all that Jin desired. Even when he was subject to all the slings and arrows of Lightning's musings, he would listen – unfeeling, yet with relish – because it was true. It was all true and golden and holy. These were the only certainties in life. Lightning was the meaning of his life; the meaning of all their lives, couldn't they – the others, his brother, all humanity really – see?

Jin so desperately wanted to submit to his darling Ignis, as low as he could go. That gave him the grandest rush of joy: as muted as it was thanks to Lightning's tinkering; tinkering Jin was thankful for. After all, he wanted to be made in the image of an Ignis than of man; anything to disassociate himself from the horror and disappointment of being human.

As this was the clearest that he had ever existed. Here, he could be straight-backed and risen to his full height. He didn't have to cling to the security of darkness which tried to soothe him with satiny lies, but ultimately failed because he knew the truth so blinding and lit by aether. Here he could express himself; even if he had such an unkind and unmoving face.

Back at the hospital, back in the real world, back in his body, Jin had none of that and he owed it all to his dear Lightning. The one who had pierced the black and pierced the electricity and brought him the grandest, illuminating light that Jin had ever known. It was wondrously sublime and drenched in the ichor of singularity: the origin of light.


End file.
